East Moline Marathon story has legs

(apologies for the bad pun)

The story of former East Moline mayor Joe Moreno, who pulled a donated pace truck into the path of a freight train and sat in it in order to prevent a train from interfering for the third time with runners of the marathon he is instrumental in creating is ongoing.

While some are quick to condemn the mayor for what was a pretty reckless and potentially dangerous act, there's more to the story. From reading accounts from both sides, it's apparent that the railroad company weren't exactly cooperative either, and seemed to act with a disapointing arrogance, basically telling the organizers, who had made every attempt to work with and coordinate things with the railroad, tough, we're going to run our trains whenever we feel like running them, and your race can go to hell.

It's hard to imagine that the railroad couldn't find a way to avoid having three trains running in both directions right in the middle of the marathon. It almost seems as if they did it to spite Moreno, and displays an utter lack of civic spirit in doing what they could to ensure that a community event ran smoothly. In light of that, perhaps Moreno's seemingly desperate act is a bit more understandable, if no more excusable.